A FAST way to trim volume automation?

[HiRaX]

Ok so I'm working on spotting music to picture and myself and my boss (the music supervisor) have just been getting our fades all set but not really paying much attention to levels just yet. Next thing I know we have the director of the film coming in quickly followed by a nightmare of like 4 people behind me yelling differecnt commands......."Fade out there!!!!" "Bring that down" Bla lah and so forth. I'm sure some of you have encountered this. Anyhow, these guys dont know sh*t about sh*t and of course I have all sorts of volume automation going on and I am expected to turn the level up or down on their command so I found myself like stopping the video (which annoyed them) to trim the volume automation down. And so basically I would select the regions I needed to trim (viewing volume) and then using the trim tool to lower levels. Does anyone know an efficient way to trim down automation quickly? I was being fairly quick about it but then sometimes after selecting a region an anchor point wouldnt get selected correctly and then I was creating fades by accident. It was a nightmare. And of course the people behind me are like "cant you just bring it down?" And "why are you stopping it" I of course didnt want to stop and explain how automation works in pro tools so I kinda just said give me a minute.Anyone got any tips for this?
Thanks

[SimpleNatureSpirit]

Set the automation to auto read or whatever that is called. That way you can ride the fader in real time. Using the right setting here will let the fader go back to read mode when you let go of the fader. You can quickly preview the change with the transport controls and a simple click on another track. Don't worry about pretty automation until you later. Just capture their input quickly and thin automation later.

If they still don't like it, get up from your chair and signal the most vocal one to take a seat

[blairl]

You don't have to stop playback in Pro Tools to trim automation. While the session is playing you can select the area you want to affect then use the trim tool to bring it up or down. If you have problems with anchor points you can manually put new anchors just to the left and right of the selection before trimming.

[thin ice]

On this topic. Is there anyway to grab all volume automation from a track and adjust the level of the whole track? That means higher or lower overall, but not losing the work already done. My usual way around this is to adjust the output of a plugin.

[Rail Jon Rogut]

3 options:

1) Trim Automation

2) Trim Tool

3) Buss the track to an Aux Track and use that for your master level

Rail

[spigots]

in practice it is a combination of what rail suggests

[Hit$quad]

On this topic. Is there anyway to grab all volume automation from a track and adjust the level of the whole track? That means higher or lower overall, but not losing the work already done. My usual way around this is to adjust the output of a plugin.

Yes and its pretty easy...All you have to do is grab the volume line way past when the song is finished
For example: Your song is 3 min so go to 20 min timewise> select trim and pull down volume line the whole line should go down now (all the automation and all).

Hope this helps

[TXDigi]

or how about just adjusting the output level of the last plug-in/insert your using or if no plug-ins put a trim plug on an insert and adjust up or down.

this avoids using any trim tool and often gets the job done with the same result

[RobMacki]

3 options:

3) Buss the track to an Aux Track and use that for your master level

Rail

I found this to be best for the way I work.
It is also how I bounce to stems Aux for each stem.

[pockets745]

Ok, so we have all these suggestions, but, really for the money they all kinda SUCK!! Why is it for the 12,000 dollars I spent on an HD3 Accel system, Digi can't come up with an edit tool to trim volume by an entered amount for the whole track, instead of having to:

1. Enlarge the track
2. Zoom out to see the entire track
3. select volume
4. select correct tool ( what's it called??)
5. get TYLENOL out; take two
6. select region, but be careful.....if you do it incorrectly, you'll only make some kind of radical volume fade, and will have to..
7. UNDO!
8. make sure you have an anchor on both ends of the region you're trying to fix
9. go out and get client who by now has tried to get a cab and get the hell out if this fiasco!!
10. go back, grab tool, making sure you're at the right area in the edit window, or you won't be able to do diddly !#%$#
11. I believe holding down the apple key while grabbing the line will allow you to do finer adjustments
12. when tool turns into horizontal bar, click and drag down or up how ever many db's you desire

The way it should work:
1. select track
2. go to edit trim volume
3. enter amount and press enter
4. DONE!!

WOW!!! sounds like someone from the medical profession designed this thing!! LOL!!